Poudre River rafting companies facing record-low flows

9:22 PM,
May 15, 2012

A raft from A1 Whitewater moves down the Poudre River on Tuesday afternoon.

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It's a commercial rafting company's worst nightmare: a river facing record-low flows from a spring that came in like a lamb and looks to be leaving like a mouse.

That's what the five commercial companies permitted to raft the Poudre River are facing as the commercial season opened Tuesday to a scene eerily similar to 2002, a year that makes Colorado rafting company owners cringe due to the headline-grabbing wildfires and record-low flows that summer.

With the Hewlett Gulch Fire burning to the north of a Poudre River that, barring a freakish record snowstorm, will go down as one of the worst ...